


I'm ready for it (come on bring it)

by calmena



Series: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2019 [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Interior Decorating, M/M, Modern Bucky Barnes, Modern Steve Rogers, Not Canon Compliant, meet ugly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2020-07-10 18:40:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19910380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calmena/pseuds/calmena
Summary: "Just do your thing," Stark said, utterly unimpressed and, coincidentally, unhelpful as he waved off any and all attempts Bucky made to get Stark's preferences out of him. "Go wild, I'm never up here anyway. Make all your hipster interior designer frenemies jealous."Well, that was it, Bucky decided. He was going to create something that was so utterly perfect, Stark was going to be forced to eat his words.Or: The one where Bucky is an interior designer and enters a battle of wills against Tony Stark.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For day 1 of Winteriron Week: First meetings. Thanks once more to QueenMaeve, who is a wonderful beta.
> 
> Please enjoy this first chapter while I agonize over the fact that I'm about to quit my job and be without an income for at least two months.

If someone had asked child-Bucky what he wanted to become when he grew up, he would have probably said something cute but ultimately unlikely to be achieved, like most kids. Pilot. Rock star. Professional motorbike driver (his mother had not been particularly happy with that plan). Botanist, which had been less unlikely but only a short-lived fascination during that year where he became temporarily enamored with plants.

The poor succulents that he killed by over-enthusiastically watering to death would haunt him forever.

Once he got older, Bucky spent a long stretch convinced that he'd become a mechanic because engines were _cool_ , but even that had lost most of his interest by the time he was about to finish high school.

In the end, he joined the military, because when it came down to it, he had no idea what he _actually_ wanted to do, and it seemed wrong to waste money on education he wasn’t particularly sure he really wanted. It seemed like as good a decision as anything.

A fat lot of good that did him, he thought, still bitter even now. He’d come back three years later, missing an arm and having gained a hefty case of PTSD.

He ended up hanging around Steve's place when he wasn't working on administrative tasks at a mechanic's shop. They’d taken pity on him because he used to work for them back when he’d been sixteen and had two working arms.

Steve, of course, had gotten into art school on a full ride, something that had not surprised Bucky in the least and somehow still managed to completely blindside Steve. He was halfway through his Illustration Master’s by the time Bucky had returned, with little to show for his military career except for a shiny Purple Heart that did nothing but remind him of the circumstances of his lack of arm.

And still, Bucky thought, watching with dry amusement as Steve grumbled over his assignment of the day, he wasn’t sure that he’d have done all that great at university, had he chosen to go back when he was eighteen. Sure, he thought Steve’s art was great and that he was doing amazingly well, working towards his illustration degree, but with the amount of complaining that came from Steve on an almost daily basis, you’d think he was working on something other than the one area he’d always exceeded in and was incredibly passionate about.

Case in point, he thought, as Steve slapped down some half-hearted sketches on the small table of the coffee shop where they sometimes set up. Frowning, with pencil smudges still on his fingers, Steve slid them Bucky's way in a wordless request for feedback.

When Bucky simply raised an eyebrow at him after glancing down, Steve groaned, hiding his face in his hands, smearing graphite across his forehead and cheeks.

"I hate backgrounds," he complained, voice muffled. "It's supposed to look 'high-class and modern', but it keeps coming out gaudy."

Bucky sniggered quietly, unable to help it even in the face of Steve's suffering. Gaudy was about right, and modern was a bit of a reach. Sure, neither of them had ever lived in the sort of place Steve was supposed to draw, but Bucky could imagine what the assignment asked for well enough to know that Steve was way off.

Holding out his hand, he wiggled his fingers when Steve only looked at him with a distrustful frown.

"Give it here, it can't get much worse," he sassed, laughing when Steve made an indignant sound and dug up a pencil just to throw it at him.

And that was how they found out that while Bucky sucked at drawing anything remotely alive, he absolutely excelled at making up the interior of whatever layout was put in front of him.

* * *

"Just make them do whatever they think best," Tony muttered dismissively around the screwdriver in his mouth, looking through the magnification glass down at DUM-E's base. Something about the wheels hadn't been working right for days, and he was finally going to fix it, even if it took him another hour to find the problem. "I'm never up there anyway."

Pepper sighed the exasperated sigh of the eternally ignored. "You can't spend all your time in your workshop," she argued, ignoring Tony's petulant, "Can too."

"There is an entire floor in this tower that's just sitting all but empty. At least meet up with him and see what his ideas are, then you can still decide you don't ever want to leave this floor and ignore the painstakingly furnished personal floor you own."

"I'm busy," Tony immediately answered, then made a triumphant sound when he finally found a corroded wire that was barely hanging on to the solder. "I can't leave poor DUM-E like this! You know how much he likes to be mobile."

DUM-E gave a cheerful beep, even upside-down as he was. When he tried to wave his claw, it scraped along the floor, making a sound that made even Tony shiver.

There was a distinctly enraged silence from Pepper's direction.

Tony was determined to ignore it for all of thirty seconds before he started to fear for his life and gave in, spitting out the screwdriver and affixing the cover back onto DUM-E's base. He patted him as he gestured for JARVIS to turn DUM-E back the right way around.

Finally, sighing, Tony swiveled on the chair so he could actually look at Pepper, crossing his arms. At some point, he just had to accept that a conversation was going to be happening, whether he liked it or not.

"So which big name is going to make my place look like a museum of modern architecture this time?"

Pepper smiled sweetly, making warning bells to go off in his head, as she slapped a folder down in front of him. She only just managed to miss his fingers, too, causing Tony to sputter indignantly—something she ignored entirely as she opened the folder to what looked like images of someone's apartment.

"No big name this time," she said, tapping the name at the top of the page.

Tony squinted at it. "James Barnes, huh? Never heard of him."

Pepper sighed. She probably only managed not to roll her eyes at him because she was Pepper and had iron self-control. He _would_ most likely end up with a suspiciously tightly filled meeting calendar in the next few days in retaliation, though, because nobody did revenge quite like Pepper Potts.

"That's the idea," she said pointedly. "He's an up-and-coming interior designer based out of Brooklyn."

"Up-and-coming, huh?" Tony muttered, interrupting Pepper and ignoring the glare that earned him as he leafed through what he now recognized as a design suggestion—had Pepper opened the project up for bids? "He's probably one of those hipsters. Pepper, did you hire a hipster to furnish my floor? Am I going to end up with _bean bags_?"

Pepper visibly stood up straighter, sniffing. "You can ask him yourself," she said primly, "You're meeting in thirty minutes—on your floor, so he can get an idea of the space. Don't be late, or he has my permission to go wild with his imagination."

"I'm working on something!"

"Well, a little birdy told me you have _been_ working on said something for over twelve hours. I'd say it's time for a short break anyway. You might as well meet this James Barnes." She wrinkled her nose. "But please, for the love of God, shower before you do."

...Rude.

* * *

To say that Bucky was nervous would be an understatement. When his assistant—because he had an _assistant_ now, which he still couldn't believe—had come into his office, looking shell-shocked and telling him that a Ms. Potts had just requested his service and that it was in regards to Stark Tower, Bucky had been hard-pressed not to ask him if this was a practical joke.

Even when he’d entered the bidding, he’d only done so because of Steve’s urging. Not because he’d thought they’d actually _choose it_.

But there had been an agreed-upon date and time, and he wasn't just going to fail to show up, not when there was even a hint of the chance that this was real.

So here he was. On the bottom floor of Stark Tower, about to announce himself to one of the intimidatingly productive looking receptionists, while the other one was politely but very firmly verbally slaughtering someone for attempting to get an audience with Ms. Potts without having an appointment.

Bucky _really_ hoped his appointment actually existed.

Almost swallowing his tongue when the receptionist turned towards him, sharp-looking nails still tapping away on the keyboard in front of her, Bucky tried to smile as if he knew what he was doing.

"I'm Bucky—I mean, James Barnes. I should have an appointment with Ms. Potts?"

"Just a moment, please."

And there she went, tapping away, probably looking for him in the calendar. Bucky just about felt his heart in his throat when she frowned, glancing at him, then back at the desktop in front of her, before she started tapping away once more.

In a second, she was going to tell him that there was no appointment and that he was an awful excuse of a human being for trying to gain entry like this—

"Ah, here," she said, breaking through his anxiously spiraling thoughts just as he was debating telling her that it was okay, he was leaving anyway. "You must have gotten the wrong information, the meeting isn't with Ms. Potts, it's with Doctor Stark."

There he went, swallowing his tongue after all.

By the time he'd finished coughing, no doubt red-faced, the lady behind the reception desk had put a bottle of water in front of him in a display of preparation and care. Bucky appreciated it, even if he didn't miss that she was hiding a little smile behind her hand as she carefully didn't look at him to avoid making him feel watched in his moment of embarrassment.

"Thank you."

Taking the bottle, he tried for another smile, this time notably even more ill at ease than before, mostly because he'd already managed to make an idiot out of himself and he hadn't even met who he was here to see.

Which was apparently Tony Stark himself, oh god.

"Of course," the woman smiled back, completely professional once more. "If you would please make your way to the leftmost elevator, you will be brought to the appropriate level."

Bucky thanked her again, holding on to the bottle for dear life as he walked across the foyer as if he was going to his execution, cursing every single decision he'd ever made that had brought him where he was today.

The doors had already closed behind him when he remembered that he hadn't actually gotten a floor number or designation, and was completely clueless as to which button to press. He was about to reopen the doors, already dreading the embarrassing moment of having to return to the reception to ask where he was supposed to end up, after all, when the elevator was set in motion, going up for longer than he would have thought possible if he hadn’t already known how many floors Stark Tower had.

He figured he might as well ask a person on whichever floor he ended up on, or if all else failed, go back down. After all, he was—he checked his phone—five minutes early, so he supposed he had the time, if worse came to worst. He'd even bear the embarrassment of his absentmindedness if it came to that.

When the door opened, however, it was to what looked like empty living quarters.

Without taking a step out of the elevator, Bucky leaned forward until he could see more of the floor, in an attempt to figure out who had called the elevator, if nothing else. Deciding that it would be impolite to step foot onto what was obviously a living space of some sort, Bucky hesitated, unsure what to do as his unease started to steadily climb once more.

 _"You may exit the lift,"_ a British voice said then, seemingly coming from everywhere. Bucky just about jumped out of his skin, heart threatening to burst out through his chest in a display reminiscent of that one scene in Alien that everyone knew.

There was a little note of amusement when the man continued—and wasn't Bucky just amusing everyone today, he thought to himself dryly. _"Doctor Stark will be with you in a few minutes, his previous appointment ran a tad late. Please, feel free to make yourself comfortable while you wait."_

"Of course," Bucky squeezed out, ignoring how his voice was just a tiny bit higher than normal, still reeling. "Thank you."

For a minute or two, he hesitated about doing anything beyond taking the single step outside the elevator so the door could close once more. Frozen in his spot, Bucky instead craned his head up, appreciating the height and openness of the room and the possibilities that brought with it.

It was, he thought to himself, a bit empty and clinical for his taste, so that would be his first task—to find out whether that was Stark's preference. If so, Bucky would, of course, accommodate the style. If he weren't able to furnish anyone's home whose style didn't completely align with his own, he would be very bad at his job.

He would get Stark a new couch though, Bucky decided once he actually sat down. If nothing else, people should be able to sit comfortably while they were in their living spaces. This was a travesty.

Except what if that was Stark's taste? Did he prefer style over function?

Maybe he should make Stark take one of those "what's my personal aesthetic" quizzes that had been popping up all over the internet, Bucky thought, only a bit hysterically.

Before he could work himself into a nervous breakdown, the elevator slid open, without so much as a ping to allow Bucky to collect himself in that split second. Still, Bucky jumped out of his seat, taking a step towards it, hand already extended in preparation for a handshake.

He needn't have bothered.

Stark came sweeping out of the elevator like a horde of devils were after him, barely even glancing at Bucky.

Even when Bucky turned his outstretched hand into an awkward wave, it only got him a short glance before he was summarily dismissed.

Well then.

Awkwardly hovering around the room was probably not the way to get Stark's respect or even attention, but it was still what Bucky did. He tried so hard not to uncomfortably follow Stark around with his eyes that he almost startled when a mug suddenly appeared in front of him, breaking his stare-off with the floor.

When he didn't immediately react, Stark wiggled the mug in front of him without spilling so much as a drop.

"I'm being a good host and offering you something to drink," he helpfully explained, slowly, as if Bucky might not understand him otherwise. "It's coffee."

"Thank you," Bucky said dumbly, a bit overwhelmed. Didn't people usually ask before getting someone something to drink? But then, it felt ungrateful to actually say that out loud.

He watched wordlessly as Stark fell onto an armchair, then watched some more until, finally, Stark made an impatient noise and gestured at the armchair kitty-corner to the one he himself had already made himself comfortable on.

"Sit, for heaven's sake. The hovering is going to give me a conniption."

And so Bucky sat.

* * *

It didn't take long for Bucky to understand that Stark did not intend to make his job easy—in that he refused to give any helpful input, at all.

When Bucky asked him what his preferences were, Stark just waved him off, absently swirling his tonic water in his glass as if it was the most fascinating thing.

"Just do your thing," Stark said, utterly unimpressed and, coincidentally, unhelpful as he ignored any and all attempts Bucky made to get Stark's preferences out of him. "Go wild, I'm never up here anyway. Make all your hipster interior designer frenemies jealous."

Well, that was it, Bucky decided, utterly fed-up as he was seemingly dismissed with those words. He was going to create something that was so utterly perfect, Stark was going to be forced to eat his words.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who'd have thought writing my Master's thesis and also working 40 hours a week would be this time-consuming? Yeah.
> 
> Thanks to Queen Maeve who beta-ed the first 2/3 of this. The rest is, sadly, unbetaed because then I'd probably have forgotten about it again, sorry.

The interior designer was still there.

Tony squinted.

Yeah, it wasn’t just a trick of the eyes. The guy had definitely made himself comfortable at the coffee table on Tony’s personal floor – though to be fair, comfortable was a reach, considering how he was crouching over the short thing. It couldn’t be particularly healthy for his spine, Tony mused absently, eyeing the hunched-over position he was sitting in, bits of hair falling into his face as he worked on something with quick strokes of what looked like a fancy pencil.

Tony wouldn’t know, he didn’t particularly remember the last time he’d used any type of traditional writing… _thing_ over technology. Besides the fact that JARVIS made actually noting something down himself pretty much obsolete, Tony just didn't like how easy to lose bits of paper were. You never knew who'd find them, after all.

Fool me once, and all that shit.

Taking another step into the room, Tony was surprised when icy blue eyes immediately flew up and focused on him with an almost unnerving intensity. Pausing in his movement, Tony waited for… something. But the guy—what was his name, something with B… Bronco? Bart? Barnes! That was it, wasn't it?—stayed silent, even as his eyes followed Tony’s movement around seemingly without so much as a blink.

"Can I help you?" Tony finally asked, thoroughly disturbed. He was used to people staring at him, but it was usually with some sort of expression on their face, not with a single-minded intensity that didn't really show anything at all. 

The stares also didn't usually tend to happen just after he'd left his workshop in search of coffee. That was a thing, too.

Though to be fair, there had been that one time he'd come out of an inventing binge haze wearing only a pair of Iron Man boxers, which had certainly gotten him _some_ looks when he'd ended up finding Pepper and Rhodey waiting for him on his floor. Not that either of them hadn't already seen him in worse situations.

So this was different in a not-so-great way. It certainly didn't help when the only reaction to the question he got from Barnes—that _was_ his name, right?—was a short shake of his head and a drawled, "Nah, I'm good."

Tony paused for a moment longer, staring back at Barnes hard, just in case something else would be forthcoming.

Barnes went back to sketching whatever it was he was working on.

Well, then.

Huffing quietly to himself, Tony returned to his trek towards the coffee machine, rolling his eyes. If he wanted to play the nuisance, then Tony could live with that, too. It wasn't like he spent much time up on his floor, which was what he'd been saying all this time, anyway. It wouldn't bother him to know that someone was sitting around up here all on their own while he was down in his workshop.

* * *

It _did_ bother him.

* * *

"Can you _not_?"

Bucky looked up from what had to be the fifth rough sketch of a first idea for the space. So far, he hadn't really felt like any of them were even close to right, and it still didn't seem like Stark was about to give him any useful input at all, either. Difficult circumstances notwithstanding, Bucky would be damned if he didn't do his best to make the man eat his words from back when they'd met for the first time.

In a move that was probably more underhanded than strictly necessary, Bucky had gone to Miss Potts to ask whether he could set up shop in the space he was going to be working with for a while. She'd looked at him searchingly for a few moments, a sharpness about her that had felt vaguely intimidating, and Bucky had forced himself not to freeze up in the face of what felt almost like a threat. Because yes, it hadn't taken him long to figure out who was really the one in control here, even if his official point of contact was supposed to be Stark, but he hadn't expected the sheer intensity about her. 

Finally, after so long that Bucky had almost been tempted to take back the question entirely, she'd nodded sharply. Sure, she'd left him with about a million papers to sign, only half of which had been about how he'd keep quiet about anything he saw, but he didn't doubt he wouldn't have gotten even that far if he hadn't already somehow earned her goodwill.

And thus, here he was. Apparently, Stark hadn't been warned before seeing him just a few minutes ago. Really, the time between Stark leaving and returning was probably only barely enough for him to have gone to wherever it was he spent most of his day and turning back around right away.

Despite himself and the low-level annoyance that Bucky felt at Stark's refusal to work together on the space he lived in, there was a small thrum of amusement at the thought. Even with the man right in front of him, visibly agitated, though not to the level where Bucky would be afraid of being thrown out, a smirk almost fought itself free.

Iron control notwithstanding, a tiny twitch of his lips probably still escaped.

Stark must have been watching his reaction like a hawk because he puffed up like an annoyed cat, an image that had no business being as adorable as it was. Bucky was sure Stark was supposed to seem intimidating, but here, in his home when he was not actively feeling threatened, just mildly annoyed, he was—yes, cute.

"Stop what?" Bucky asked pleasantly, consciously looking away from Stark and back at his sketches, taking in the newest one with a critical eye. Something was still not clicking with him.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Stark make an aborted step in his direction, then violently shake his head and pointedly turning away from him and managing to somehow soundlessly stomp—and wasn't that a sight, Bucky thought with suppressed amusement—towards the kitchen once again.

Probably to get even more coffee, Bucky decided, absently noting down 'coffee' in all-caps on a corner of his current sketch, underlining the word after considering it for a moment. Not that Stark needed more coffee since Bucky was pretty sure he’d left with a mug in hand just minutes before.

All things considered, Bucky did not expect Stark to come back with not one, but two mugs, all but slamming one of them down in front of Bucky when he came to stand next to the small living room table that was really more of a visual statement than it was functional.

"There, now stop with the staring," Stark grunted as if coffee had been what Bucky had wanted to achieve all along. With the arms crossed in front of his chest, dark glare on his face, Bucky thought it might cause Stark more agitation than Bucky intended to if he refused the offer.

He took the coffee.

* * *

The coffee was delicious.

Damn it.

* * *

Barnes drank the coffee like it really was the nectar of the gods that it tasted like, and Tony was a tiny bit appeased. Only the smallest, most insignificant amount though, he assured himself. He certainly wasn't warming up to the man, he still thought the whole thing was useless and a waste of everyone's time, and he would still be spending almost all of his waking time down in his workshop, even if Barnes ended up making his 'vision' reality, or whatever interior designers liked to spout. 

Tony had no idea. There was a reason why he usually stayed out of this. It wasn't like he particularly _cared_ . He'd always lived in spaces that were more at home on the front of a magazine than… well… a _home_. It was madness that this guy thought whatever he was cooking up would be any different.

The mug was half-empty when Barnes set it down, Tony noted with appreciation, and sipped his own more slowly as he considered the man.

When Barnes just ignored him and started sorting through the papers that somehow managed to hide the tabletop, Tony's own gaze shifted, taking in the—ideas. Because that's what they were, sketches of what Tony recognized as his own living area with different furniture and layouts.

They weren't bad, Tony admitted, despite himself. They were definitely better than some of the designs he'd had pitched to him in the past. However, they also weren't something that would make Tony want to leave his workshop more than he did, and he suspected that there was little that would make it so. Really, Barnes had accepted an impossible challenge, most likely without being aware of it.

He should probably pity him for his drive to make something Tony would like.

Barnes was staring at him again as if he was trying to figure something out. Something in his eyes almost seemed like it was weighing him.

Strike that, the little shit deserved every bit of frustration Tony was putting him through.

* * *

"What's your opinion regarding colors?"

"Oh, just pick whatever you like best."

Bucky gritted his teeth.

* * *

"Any specific requirements I should work into the room layout?"

"Whatever, I don't care."

He resisted throwing the sketchbook at Stark's head. Even if it was really tempting.

 _Really_ tempting.

* * *

"Any chance of getting your opinion on a prospective design?"

"..."

A sigh. 

"Yeah, I didn't think so."

* * *

"You don't understand, Steve," Bucky muttered, glaring at the half-empty beer bottle he was cradling between his hands as he thumbed a loose corner of its label. "He's not giving me _anything_ to work with. This could be the thing that makes or breaks my career, and he's just _daring_ me to fail."

Steve made commiserating sounds around his own beer, not that it did anything to distract Bucky from the fact that he was really playing footsie with Peggy under the table and only listening half-heartedly.

Peggy smiled at him sympathetically, even as she did nothing to dissuade Steve from continuing.

Bucky glared harder because there wasn't much else he could do when faced with the two lovebirds and their PDA, understated though it might have been. But still, Bucky _knew_. 

He was pouring out his heart to them, goddamnit, the least they could do was pay attention and offer to punch Stark in his irritatingly perfect teeth or something. Not that he'd expect them to actually do it, he admitted to himself in the same train of thought. Stark probably had people that kept him from getting punched in his teeth. Not that Bucky had seen any, so far, but that didn't mean there _weren't_ any.

Stark's teeth were probably insured for several million dollars, besides. Couldn't have that perfect smile be marred, after all, Bucky thought bitterly.

"Why don't you just figure out his likes and dislikes by yourself?" Peggy asked then, as if the thought hadn't already crossed his mind a dozen times. It turned out finding out stuff about Stark—the real stuff, not the typical gossip that you could find anywhere and was probably at least a half-lie ninety percent of the time—was harder than one would think.

The man had made deflection into an art form, which was also what Bucky responded with, half hoping Peggy would have a solution.

Steve interrupted before he could get a potentially helpful answer, however, "Why don't you just do whatever? If he doesn't care, it's his own fault if it comes out generic and boring."

Half of Bucky wanted to focus on the "generic and boring" part, because how dare Steve ever call one of his creations that. The half that won out, however, was the one that wanted to _explain_.

"But Steve, my _pride_."

Yeah, he thought, satisfied, and ignored how Steve hid his face in his hands and groaned. That explained the why pretty perfectly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I can't wait for the bug with the multiple kudos per user to be fixed, they throw me off so much, omg)


End file.
